Review: Regina Spektor at Radio City Music Hall

“This is how it worksYou’re young until you’re notYou love until you don’tYou try until you can’tYou laugh until you cryYou cry until you laughAnd everyone must breatheUntil their dying breath”

– Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor’s show at Radio City Music Hall last Saturday was unique in a number of ways. For one thing, she didn’t use the ubiquitous screens to magnify her performance the way every act I’ve seen at venues of that size for the past ten years has. She also had no other singers to supplement her vocals. She didn’t need them. Except for one song, she had no guitarist. She was accompanied by two violins, a viola, a cello, drums, and another keyboard in addition to the grand piano she played. But what made the show stand out the most for me, other than the songs and her performance of them, was its intimacy. I’d never before seen an artist have a phone call with her mother from the stage.

The song selection leaned heavily on last year’s Remember Us to Life and the 2006 collection Begin to Hope. She opened with On the Radio, quoted above, and had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand from the first note. Four of the next five songs were from the new album before she launched into a touching cover of Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel #2. All the new songs sounded as polished as if she had been playing them live for many years, except for one gaffe. After a false start she stopped to say she was going to pretend she wasn’t performing at “Radio Fucking City” but was just playing a gig in a bar. As it was Purim, she talked about how she used to pass around bags of candy to the audience during previous shows on the holiday but couldn’t do it in a venue of that size. Her sweetness was enough.

About that phone call: This was her first home-town show that her mother had missed, due to illness. It turns out Mrs. Spektor is public school music teacher and had caught something from the children who like her so much that they hug her. So the dutiful daughter called to check in on her mother whose Russian words echoed off the venue’s scalloped walls. Regina translated her mother’s words to her “little kitten.” On cue, the 6,000 in the crowd yelled “Feel Better Mrs. Spektor!” like school children. Later, when a man in the crowd yelled, “You’re amazing!” She answered, “It’s a very kind and reassuring voice you have, sir.” And it was. Without mentioning Trump and all the specific ugliness unleashed and marauding in this country, she spoke of resisting the forces of darkness with positive forces like music. The whole show was kind and reassuring. At times like these, that may be the most valuable gift anyone can give.

Here is her video for The Trapper and the Furrier, one of the most powerful songs from her new album:

The trapper and the furrier went walking through paradiseAnd all the animals lay clawless and toothless before themAnd all the mothers stepped away from their babiesLeaving them open and easy to handleThe trapper and the furrier went walking through paradiseThey took some for now and they got some for laterAnd they marveled at the pelts, not a bullet hole in themAnd they filled up the cages with pets for their childrenWhat a strange, strange world we live inWhere the good are damned and the wicked forgivenWhat a strange, strange world we live inThose who don’t have lose, those who got get givenMore, more, more, moreThe owner and the manager went walking through paradiseAnd all the shelves were filled with awards and achievementsAnd on every corner, a power presentationAnd on every floor, an army of workersThe owner and the manager went walking through paradiseAnd all their charts showed so much promise and progressNo sick days, no snow days, no unions, no taxesAnd they wandered towards home, kings of their castlesWhat a strange, strange world we live inWhere the good are damned and the wicked forgivenWhat a strange, strange world we live inThose who don’t have lose, those who got get givenMore, more, more, more

The lawyer and the phar
macist went walking through paradiseAnd all the sick were around with fevers unbreakingCrying and bleeding and coughing and shakingAnd arms outstretched, prescription collectingThe lawyer and the pharmacist went walking through paradisePressed suits in a courtroom, aroma of chloroformAnd they smiled at the judge, disposition so sunny‘Cause they didn’t have the cure but sure needed the moneyWhat a strange, strange world we live inWhere the good are damned and the wicked forgivenWhat a strange, strange world we live inThose who don’t have lose, those who got get givenMore, more, more, more